G'Day all from Down Under! I'd like to share my latest build with you all.

Ever since I finished building my Academy F-14 Jolly Rogers a while ago, I have always wanted to build a Super Hornet version of it. One that I can mount right next to the F-14 in an in-flight pose. After searching for quite some time, I finally found the Jolly Rogers decals made by Jasmine Decals on eBay. The biggest problem with Jasmine Decals is that their so-called "instruction sheet" only shows the placement of the larger and more visible decals. I had to refer back to the Hasegawa instruction sheet for placement of the majority of the small stencils.

I built this in parallel to Revell's Jolly Rogers Super Hornet as part of ARCforums "The Hornet's Nest Group Build". This was the 3rd Hasegawa "F" Super Hornet that I built. I think because of experience, I found that I needed a bit less putty, especially for the wings.

One disappointment that I have with this build was the frosting on the windscreen that I only discovered after unmasking. Oh well... Not much I can do about it. To be honest, I can't remember when was the last time this happened to me. 

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The AIM-9X came with the kit. Although the kit also came with AIM-120A/B, I decided to use the ones from Hasegawa Aircraft Weapons V that I already painted and decaled a few years ago (when I built my very first "F" Super Hornet). The AGM-84E also came from Hasegawa Aircraft Weapons V, also painted and decaled a few years ago. The GBU-12's came from Academy "A" Hornet Blue Angels boxing. I took some of these pics before I realised that I forgot to install the fin antenna on the spine.

For this build, I used predominantly LifeColor paint for a change. The following is the list of paint that I used for this build. I thinned the LifeColor with distilled water mixed with Windex (@ 50:50).

• LifeColor FS36375

• LifeColor FS36320

• Mr Metal Color Dark Iron

• Mr Metal Color Iron

• Mr Metal Color Aluminum

• Tamiya semi-gloss black (X-18)

• Tamiya Smoke (X-19)

• Tamiya gloss clear (X-22)

• Gunze flat clear

• Oil wash

If I have to name one lesson that I learned while building this bird, it would have to be: DO NOT build more than 2 parallel projects!! Because I was working on 5 parallel birds, 4 of which were Super Hornets, I made quite a few mistakes that I should not have made. Still, I'm still pretty happy with the result, despite the frosting on the windscreen.

Hope you like it!

Michael "Chewie" Choo

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